rollercoaster...

It has to be a confusing mess for John…well, a rollercoaster for the two of us. One minute, he feels as if he can conquer the world and the next, there seems to be nothing in this world that can make him feel better. Without feeling, without change, his concentration lies solely on mentally concentrating on how he can be better…in the moment. In that exact moment, all he wants is to be better. We have said it time and time again, “Two steps forward, one step back.” This means every week off, we take two steps forward toward weight gain/feeling better and during the week of chemotherapy, he seems to take one step back. Yes, a very natural occurrence when you have that amount of poison pumping through your body. Since his last treatment….we took, what I feel, five steps back. There has not been one day of just feeling good…not even just okay. The nausea, migraines, back pain, coughing, chills, and cloudiness have completely debilitated John. He has been down for the count since the fifth round. I try to make him feel better and continue to feed him as much as possible, but there is only so much of this push I can subject him to. He just does not feel good right now.

On top of all this, chemo starts again tomorrow. The build up and anxiety that comes along with these weeks are agonizing. There is nothing we can do to stop these necessary weeks from coming, he just has to sit back and count down the days until they are here. This will be John’s sixth round of chemo and we hope, more testing to follow. Up until this week, we have had nothing but great news flowing our way and better control over his body. It is hard to remember those things when he feels so terrible now. The color leaves his face and all he can say to me is, “…baby, I don’t feel good.” I want to fix him. The powerless feeling of wanting to fix every ounce of pain he is in is the worst sensation in the world. I want him to have a good day….not just an okay day….a really good day. I know he wants it too. He is the one who is reminding me that all of this is a part of the process. He is the one who tells me he is getting the “bad stuff” out. I am so fed up with the bad stuff I could scream. It is time for the good stuff to overwhelm the bad and kick it out of his system.

Tomorrow is week six and ironically, six months since he was diagnosed. We have been on this road less traveled. This has been the roughest six months of our lives and we seem to find each other through this fog still leaning on our love. This is all we can do. Thank you for your continued support and amazing energy. Keep it all coming as he needs it still, every second of every day.